Faculty Assembly Executive Council (FAEC) Meeting Minutes
April 11, 2012, 9:15 to 11 am
Present: Jim Morley, Elaine Risch, Jillian Weiss, Sam Mustafa, Donna Crawley, Peggy
Greene
Absent: Max Goldberg, Alex Olbrecht, Beba Shamash
Secretary: Rebecca Root
______________________________________________________________________
1. Minutes from the April 4 FAEC meeting were approved.
2. Questions for Dean's Evaluations
The last FA authorized the FAEC to develop a short list of survey questions to solicit
faculty input into deans’ evaluations. Faculty will be entitled to see the results of this
survey, unlike those for the survey sent out by the Provost’s Office.
Decision: After much discussion, the FAEC agreed to use the same response format used
in the current deans’ evaluations (the 1-6 scale below), and to administer these questions
as a separate survey from the one sent out by the Provost’s Office. The FAEC proposed
the questions below. These will be emailed to all faculty today and put up as a decision
item at next week’s FA.
Note: I include here the rationale sent by FA Pres. Morley later on April 11: The
provost’s office periodically distributes a faculty survey on deans. Unfortunately, for
personnel reasons, the results of this survey may not be seen by faculty. So, to facilitate
transparency and effective communication the FAEC has designed a separate survey to
compliment the Provost’s current survey. The quantitative results of these simple 5
questions will be shared within the units, while the content of the 6th qualitative question
will be seen by only the FAEC and the respective deans. We will vote to endorse the use
of this new survey on a regular basis.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Strongly Agree
Agree
Neutral; neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
No Opportunity to Observe
To what unit do you belong?
The dean supports the faculty in the development of their intellectual and
academic endeavors.
The dean is equitable and fair to individual faculty and staff in the distribution of
resources, including faculty/staff development opportunities.
The dean advocates vigorously and effectively for the needs of convening groups.
The dean’s method of running the Unit Council meetings is effective and
efficient.
The dean shares information from Provost Council and other relevant
administrative bodies with faculty and staff in a timely manner.
If you have additional comments on any of the questions above, please comment
here.
Discussed the logistics of administering the survey; the expectation is that the Office of
the Provost will send out the survey in the Fall, process the data, and send it to the FA
President for distribution to unit faculty. Discussed the lack of comparative data, given
that each unit will receive the results of the evaluations for their dean only. Discussed
what impact the survey data will have.
3. Meeting with Prof. Eric Wiener, Faculty Representative to the Capital
Improvements Committee of the Board of Trustees
The Committee reviews capital improvement projects before they advance to the Finance
Committee. Prof. Wiener has served in this role for 7 years. The committee typically
meets once or twice a year, with an occasional year passing without any meetings. More
frequently (1-3 times a semester), Prof. Wiener meets with Assoc. VP of Facilities
Management Dick Roberts to discuss capital projects, though less so this year. In the
past, the practice was for Prof. Wiener to report to the FA President and the full FA
periodically, but that practice was discontinued sometime in the last two academic years.
He noted that there are several ways the current process could be improved. First, he
often does not receive timely notification of the committee’s meeting. Second, the office
in charge of proposals should solicit faculty feedback in advance. Third, the faculty
representatives should return to regularly reporting to the FA President and FA after
committee meetings. Incoming FA Pres. Weiss made note of these suggestions and
promised to foster closer links between the FAEC and faculty representatives to the
Board’s committees next year.
4. Agenda for April 18 Faculty Assembly
Copies of Rep. Crawley’s report on on-line student evaluations were distributed.
Approval of this report (which contains her recommendations) will be a decision item at
FA. Later today, all FAEC reps should email their feedback on the report.
Copies of the SBR Task Force’s proposal were distributed. However, this issue is
currently being reviewed by the Union and the Office of the Provost, so it will not be
included in the FA agenda.
ARC Chair Prof. Emma Rainforth popped in to clarify the decision item that will be
voted upon at FA.
The agenda will include:
1. Approval of minutes
2. FA President’s Report (Jim Morley)
3. Provost’s Report (Beth Barnett)
4. Report of faculty reps to the Strategic Planning Task Force (Steve Rice)
5. Union Report (Irene Kuchta)
6. ARC DECISION ITEM: Program name change: Information Systems; name
change to Information Technology Management (Emma Rainforth)
7. DECISION ITEM: Approval of Report: online student evaluations (Donna
Crawley)
8. DECISION ITEM: Faculty survey on Deans (Jim Morley)
This agenda will be distributed later today, with rationales and the survey questions
included. Rep. Crawley’s report on online student evaluations will be posted on the FA
webpage.